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August 29th 2013

We began this month at MacGregor Park again - with thanks to Ana Galati. We had our friends from Bike Pirates provide tune-ups and safety checks, while SKETCH decorated the park with their bicycle themed artworks - thanks to Nadia Galati for organizing. We had snoballs again by Trevor Burnett of Tipicular Fixin's as our last icy treats of the summer, and grooved to music on both John Cairnes and Navid Taslimi's bicycle sound systems.

This month we had our second writer join us for the new Rickshaw Residency curated by Casey Hinton. This series of writers in residence join us on an Art Spin tour in a rickshaw to write about their experience. Many thanks to writer and art historian Jessica Wyman who joined us for the event. Also thanks to Christ Litt from Hop On In for driving his beautiful rickshaw around with us all night.

From the park we mounted our bikes and set off, led by our emcee Shamez Amlani of Pedestrian Sundays. Again we wore our LED matrixes that read 'follow me' to help lead the group, and displayed the names of each artist we saw along the tour. Thanks to Robert Tu for joining us with his MeU design.

Our first stop took us down an alleyway and through a scrapyard to see The Travelling Eye: A Selection of Videos from the Jeanne Parkin Collection at Scrap Metal Gallery. Thanks to curator Rui Amaral, who spoke to the group about the collection, gallery and exhibition.

The second stop on the tour saw us at The Church of the First Born Apostolic for an interactive and lively performance by The Element Choir led by Christine Duncan. Many thanks to Pastor Miller for allowing us the use of his church and to the active audience members for playing their part in the choir.

Thirdly we made our way as the sun set to a school playground at Perth Ave. and Franklin Ave. for a candlelit performance of étude pour 8 corps by Simon Renaud and company, guest curated by Cara Spooner.

 

Hopping on the west-end rail path we then made our way to Ernest Ave. for a first-time public screening of Le cerf, ou moi qui cède à l'espace directed by Montreal artist Ariane Boulet. Projected on the side of a corrugated metal building, this quiet dance film was a beautiful contrast to the setting.

Passing her on the ride, we saw Faye Mullen and her Studio Crate a project commissioned by Art Spin; her nomadic studio she's been towing by hand all over the city. Faye joined us with her crate on the previous tour in July, and since then has been moving it around the city for the month of August. Her final location for the month was outside the Tower Automotive Building where participants could interact with her and see her at work in the studio. Stay tuned for a recap and some interesting documentation of Faye's last month as she towed the Studio Crate.

The end of the tour brought us to our final stop at the historic Tower Automotive Building after it loomed in the background throughout our bike tour. The building played host and inspiration for The Fourth Annual Art Spin Exhibition curated by Layne Hinton and Rui Pimenta of Art Spin.

Artists exhibited included:
Vuk Dragojevic, Martie Giefert, Mary Grisey, John Haney & Carey Jernigan, Markus Heckmann, Layne Hinton, Caroline Larsen, Celia Neubauer, Kal Mansur, Noel Middleton, John Oswald, Geoffrey Pugen, Lois Schklar, Jennifer Rose Sciarrino, Michael Toke, Elinor Whidden, Jinny Yu.

The night had an operatic and dance based performance by Rui Amaral and Derek Kwan (created by Derek Liddington) and another moving performance called Abandon by Johannes Zits. Large-scale outdoor projections, Workers That Live In The Mirror by Dave Colangelo and Patricio Davila, with Navid Taslimi and his Goldsprints interactive bicycle races.

 

We also revealed the winners of our Poster Project, a collaborative project with the Community Bicycle Network that called artists and designers to create bicycle inspired designs. Congratulations to our first place winner Bradley Emsley, and the runners-up, Meaghan Barry and Lilian Crum of Unsold Studio, The Rolling Spoke, and Johnny Larocque. Their designs were included in the Art Spin Exhibition, and can now be seen on the Art Spin and CBN websites.

At the exhibition we had live music for the night by Programm, with food by the Gourmet Gringos food truck. Thanks to Will Pimenta and Billy Vastis for bartending the night.

Thanks to Daniel Faria from Daniel Faria Gallery and Niki Dracos from General Hardware Contemporary for their contributions to the Fourth Annual Art Spin Exhibition. Many thanks to Castlepoint Realty Partners in particular John O'Keefe for their support and contribution, Martin Neale from Hoopdriver for his sponsorship and Steve Reble from Kronenbourg for their support. Thanks also to Dmitri from Image Foundry for printing and framing our bicycle poster project, and Rafi Ghanaghounian from Keep6 for his generous sponsorship for our printed material. We would also like to acknowledge the Ontario Arts Council and the  Toronto Arts Council, as well as the D'Eon-Eaton family for another year of support from them.

Finally we'd like to thank our invaluable volunteer bike marshalls who joined us to help usher the ride and keep our participants safe as well as stuck around all night at the exhibition cleaning up and keeping artwork intact.

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